[No, Nietzsche is not “new”, and neither are his ideas, but since virtually all of the “New” Atheists have done little more than recycle Nietzsche’s ideas, ASND has placed him first among contemporary equals – who really aren’t “new” either.]

“I would speculate that 99.9% of all skeptics and atheists would nod in agreement with Nietzsche’s assertions [that] ‘Truth and faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other lie miles apart‘ [and] “Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is true.’”

“If the ‘purpose’ of DNA is to supervise the building of bodies, it is surprising to find a large quantity of DNA which does no such thing. Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing. But from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves, there is no paradox. The true ‘purpose’ of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger, hitching a ride in the survival machines created by the other DNA.”

“I have noticed that there are some creationists who are jumping on [the ENCODE results] because they think that’s awkward for Darwinism. Quite the contrary it’s exactly what a Darwinist would hope for, to find usefulness in the living world… Whereas we thought that only a minority of the genome was doing something, namely that minority which actually codes for protein, and now we find that actually the majority of it is doing something.”

“What is the best foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties? What grounds them? What makes certain actions good or evil, right or wrong? If God does not exist, what foundation remains for objective moral values and duties? Can science answer questions of morality? New Atheist Sam Harris thinks so.”